


i still feel your hand in mine

by brighterthanacarnival



Series: enzo's, friday, 7:00 p.m. [1]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Jopper, Joyce missing Hopper, Season 3 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2019-07-07
Packaged: 2020-06-24 07:35:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19719118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brighterthanacarnival/pseuds/brighterthanacarnival
Summary: *season 3 spoilers*-Joyce and El can't sleep, so they read together.





	i still feel your hand in mine

Joyce wakes and flings the covers away, breathing heavily. For a few seconds, the room gleams, shrouded in the same fiery light from her dream. It fades away, leaving her in the dark of her bedroom. She is cold and her hands shake in her lap as she blinks, sleep still clinging to her eyes. The telephone rings, causing her to jump. She stands up, nearly falling over some packed cardboard boxes sitting on the worn carpet. The ringing grows louder and more shrill, making her ears hurt.

She proceeds down the hallway—forgetting to turn on the lights—and grabs for the damned phone, desperate to silence it.

Joyce listens, expecting to hear his voice, but she doesn’t. She tangles the phone cord around her finger as she waits. Her voice cracks.

“Hopper?”

No response. She sighs, wondering at the reason for the late call. Her mouth feels dry.

"Hop?"

Her sleep-deranged mind registers the insistent beeping of a one-sided conversation. She closes her eyes and listens to it for a while longer as the heaviness sinks in. She leans against the wall as she remembers the light from her dream. She had imagined the ringing phone.

Joyce hangs up. She picks the phone up again. She dials, knowing she won't hear his voice no matter how much she misses it. She hangs up.

She doesn't go back to her room.

Joyce stumbles to the living room, turns on a lamp, and sits on the couch. She lights a cigarette, trying not to think about stolen Russian uniforms or strawberry slurpees.

She tries not to think about how this is different than when Bob died. After his death, nightmares didn’t leave her. She relived the sight of that monster killing him over and over again.

Now, she hardly sleeps at all. When she does, she dreams of Jim’s face right before she turned the keys.

She tries not to think about how empty she feels; how the kids can see her emptiness even though she doesn’t want them to.

A few days ago at work, she rearranged a Fourth of July clearance display. She heard boots walking into Melvald's while using a label gun, causing her to run down the aisle to the front of the store, her heart beating fast, only to see a man she'd never met before. He asked where he could find the alarm clocks.

_ “That feeling—it never goes away. But it's true—you know. What they say. Every day, it gets a little bit easier.” _

Joyce takes a long drag before she smashes the cigarette into the ashtray. She doesn’t reach for another one.

"No, it doesn't." A tear runs down her cheek and falls onto the pack of Camels lying in her lap. "It really doesn't, Hop."

He sat in her room with her the night Bob died. He comforted her as they searched for Will and took him to his checkups. He used to be indestructible, that man; permanent. He had advice for everything.

But how do you mourn a man who gives you that much light? What advice would he have for her about how to deal with his death?

She glances at the side table and notices a small pile of treasured books she gave to El.  _ Little Women _ sits on top, so she reaches for it, desperate for some form of distraction. Her hands trail over the cracked, taped cover. The pages smell bittersweet.

"You're awake."

She jumps and turns around to see Eleven standing behind the couch. She’s wearing one of Joyce's old t-shirts and a pair of flannel pajama pants. Joyce clears her dry throat.

"I couldn't sleep."

The girl doesn't respond; she walks around the couch and sit next to Joyce, staring at the book.

"I like  _ Little Women _ ," El says.

Joyce's lips twitch into a small smile.

"Me, too."

El takes the book from Joyce and opens it up to a ripped, paper bookmark near the end. She gives the opened novel back.

"Read to me?" El aks. She sounds as exhausted as Joyce feels. Joyce hesitates.

"We should go to sleep."

She says 'we' even though she means 'you'. El frowns, maintaining eye contact.

"Dad used to read to me."

Joyce despises the past-tense sentence. It sinks into the quiet, interrupted by the ticking of a clock. Eleven fiddles with the blue bracelet she always wears around her wrist.

"What kind of books?"

"I remember  _ Anne of Green Gables _ . I liked  _ Jane Eyre _ , too, even though I didn't understand all of it. The words were pretty."

"You know, those were two of my favorite books when I was younger."

El draws her knees up to her chin and holds on to her legs. Joyce lets her head fall back onto the couch, thinking about how much the teenager has faced. Hopper did his best to give her a home only to be taken away from her. It makes Joyce furious to think of how much El misses from her life. She thinks of it like a messed up puzzle with disappearing pieces and a deceiving picture on the box.

"Do you miss him?"

"Yes," Joyce whispers.

"Me, too."

The clock continues ticking. Joyce thinks El has fallen asleep until she hears quiet muttering coming from the girl.

" _ I have a strange feeling with regard to you. As if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly knotted to a similar string in you. _ " She takes a deep breath and continues slowly, lingering over some of the words. " _ And if you were to leave, I'm afraid that cord of communion would snap. And I have a notion that I'd take to bleeding inwardly. As for you, you'd forget me. _ "

Joyce swallows, trying not to cry. El's voice reminds her of a dark forest at twilight, sun fading from the sky as a soft breeze blows.

" _ Jane Eyre _ ."

El nods. Joyce reaches for the girl's hand and squeezes, thinking about the words. She wonders why someone so young would feel the need to memorize the heavy passage. She imagines a string connecting Eleven and Hopper together, wondering if that’s how the girl feels—not just because he’s gone, but because she can't even confirm his death through her powers.

And then Joyce can't help but imagine a string connecting her to Hopper as well, fraying now that he’s dead and only his memory lives on in her mind. She knows it hasn't snapped—not yet, anyway—the dreams are proof of that.

"Why do you have that quote memorized?" Joyce asks.

"Mike."

She nods, remembering the long separation the kids dealt with. She bites her lip as she remembers that moving away from Hawkins will separate them again.

“You’re not forgotten, El.”

They are quiet for a few minutes. Joyce isn't sure what time it is, but she feels the need to convince El to sleep.

"You should go—"

"Read to me."

It isn't a request anymore, but a demand. The silence lengthens between them. Joyce really doesn't have the energy to do this. She watches as the young girl examines the other books in the pile:  _ Wait For Marcy _ ,  _ The Great Gatsby _ , and  _ A Wrinkle in Time _ . She had watched El carry the books around the house like they were valuables.

"Honey—"

"Please."

Joyce looks into the girl's eyes; notices the pooling tears. So, Joyce reads  _ Little Women _ until her throat feels too dry to mutter sentences. She feels El's head rest on her shoulder during the second to last chapter.

“ _...I haf nothing to gif back but a full heart and these empty hands,” cried the Professor, quite overcome. _ "

She hears El begin to snore softly. Joyce whispers to herself.

" _ Jo never, never would learn to be proper, for when he said that as they stood upon the steps, she just put both hands into his, whispering tenderly, “Not empty now,” and stooping down, kissed her Friedrich under the umbrella. _ "

Joyce closes the book and shuts her heavy eyes. She can't bear to read the last chapter with all of its happy endings. Life isn't like that.

She finally falls asleep as she thinks about the carnival ride on the Fourth of July. She’d felt his hand in hers as they’d spun at a high speed.

She still feels his hand in hers.

**Author's Note:**

> Wow, wow, wow, Hopper's death hit me hard, but I really do think he was 'the American' mentioned in the post-credits scene. I think I'll be writing a few more one-shots and making it into a series. The part with the Jane Eyre quote was very much inspired by 'The String Theory' written on Ao3 by StarMaamMke. Go check it out, it's amazing!! Thank you so much for reading! Kudos and reviews are appreciated. :)  
> (The title of this one-shot is a line from the song 'Drink You Gone' by Ingrid Michaelson)


End file.
